I’m writing this in the early morning. The birds are asleep, the crickets, too. The sun is about to rise, and it’s going to rise just for you. There is a faint glow behind the trees. Just wait.

I received a letter this morning from a girl I’ll call Caroline. Caroline is eighteen. She told me about herself.

She wrote:

“I feel ugly and I know that’s why I’ve never had a boyfriend... I probably never will have one. People don’t like me, and I’m worried that nobody will ever love me.”

Sweet Caroline.

Here’s another letter from a man we’ll refer to as “Elvis”—because that’s what he wanted to be called. Elvis is forty-four.

He wrote:

“My ex-wife broke my heart… Why is it I end up trusting somebody and they break my heart, and instead of hating THEM, I dislike MYSELF somehow? I don’t like myself...”

And this beautiful young woman:

“I have an arteriovenous malformation… Which is why my arm doesn’t work, and now it’s moving to my leg. The malformation started

small, but has grown to the size of a tennis ball, giving me daily seizures and other obstacles…

“The hardest part about all this is being forgotten. I used to have a lot of friends before my diagnosis, but now...

“I get that people are busy, but is life really about being busy?”

Well, I hate to disappoint these good people who’ve written me, but they’re talking to the wrong guy. I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’.

The only thing I can possibly think to tell these good folks is about what happened to me during my seventh-grade year.

First, a little background: my seventh-grade year was shaping up to be a good one. Often, in the school cafeteria I’d have my pals laughing until milk spilled from their noses and they lost control of their lower…

FAIRHOPE—A bookstore downtown. A book signing. I am wearing a sport coat, shaking hands, and smiling. There are a lot of people here tonight, and I am writing my name in their books.

The ironic thing is that I am not a legitimate writer. At least, I have a hard time seeing myself that way.

I have always seen myself as a Ford-owner first, a redhead second. A close third would be a devoted husband. However, in my house this job title has no official description. It would be hard, for instance, to view my family role as any different than the role of our dogs.

My dogs and I both sleep a lot, we both depend on my wife for meals, and the highlight of our day is finding a tree in the backyard that needs watering.

But here at this bookstore, I am signing books, and people are treating me like a real writer. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

What am I

supposed to do? Smile and pretend that I’m actually what these people think I am? It feels ridiculous. It just doesn’t feel real.

I am thinking about the time in fourth grade when my mother told me I was smart, but I didn’t believe her. I seriously thought my mother was full of beans.

I made the worst grades in class. And bad grades take a toll on a kid’s mind. They make him feel like he’s doomed to be a janitor.

Imagine: All your friends are getting papers back with A’s, but your papers always bear a D, F, or a frowny face.

Also, I often got in trouble for things I didn’t do. Like the time when Mark Campbell brought a racy magazine to class. Mark’s desk was beside mine.

Mark whispered something to me but I ignored him because our teacher…

A beach bar. My wife and I are with our cousins, James and Jessica. We are eating pizza. Somebody got a little crazy and even ordered oysters.

You know what my favorite part of any family gathering is? Not oysters or pizza. The part at the end. It takes place in the parking lot, before everyone parts ways. It’s called the Goodbye Ceremony.

In this part of the world, the simple act of saying goodbye can last for three hours. Sometimes longer if it’s football season.

James and Jessica are cool cousins. I once rode out a hurricane with James. I’ll never forget it. Hurricane Ivan was tearing through Brewton, Alabama. The rest of the family was downstairs, listening to a radio by candlelight.

James and I were upstairs, the ultimate thrill seekers, watching the storm. But we couldn’t see anything because it was too dark.

So our entire conversation basically went like this:

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.”

“What about that?”

“Yep.”

When the storm hit, we heard creaking and groaning. It sounded like the core of the planet was getting ripped from the soil and hurling through outer space somewhere above the casino in Atmore.

The next morning, the town had lost so many trees you couldn’t drive down Belleville Avenue. The power was out. It was tragic.

But Brewton’s families banded together. You could see people on porches, cooking food on gas grills, drinking beer at noon.

Because that’s what family does.

Family is important to me. It becomes even more important the older I get. I didn’t grow up with much. And at this age I have to sort of create my own, which isn’t easy because I have no kids.

This is tough sometimes because I really like kids. I like them so much that every child I meet—I know this is going to…

There comes a time when a man must stand up for what he believes and ask for extra gravy on his chicken fried steak. Which is exactly what I am doing.

I am asking my wife to cover my plate in white pepper gravy.

I have a long history with chicken fried steak. It goes back to when I was a child.

Chicken fried steak was a real treat in our household. We rarely ate it at home. And we hardly ever went out to eat, either. Eating out was too expensive, and my father was so cheap that he wouldn’t have given a nickel to see Jesus ride a bike.

If we ever did go out, I was only allowed to order ice water. No ice.

Until one fateful Saturday morning, for an unknown reason, my father decided to take our family to a breakfast restaurant.

I can still remember it. The place was a dive. Vinyl seat cushions. Napkin dispensers. George Jones was singing

overhead.

My father told me I could have anything I wanted on the menu. So I ordered chicken fried steak and asked the waitress for extra white gravy.

My father said, “You’ll never finish all that.”

I laughed at my critics.

The waitress brought me a steak that was about the size of Venezuela. I ate three bites and had to be carried out of the restaurant on a stretcher.

When I got older, I visited a themed restaurant outside Little Rock that claimed to have the world’s biggest chicken fried steak.

When I ordered, the perky waitress said, “You sure you wanna order that? You look kinda puny, kid.”

“I’m sure.”

My steak arrived on a platter with a Bowie knife sticking from the top. And I could swear I heard George Jones singing overhead.

“Stand back,” I said. “This could get…

The weather is perfect. Families sit on blankets, eating fried chicken that was cooked in iron skillets. A band plays music on a miniature stage. Guitar, fiddle, and mandolin.

This is the church my friend’s mother attends. It’s tiny. Most of the congregation is late-sixties or mid-seventies. But there are plenty of young families, too.

Tonight, they are having a picnic.

The chapel is the only structure around for miles, surrounded by farmland and hayfields. Behind the all-brick building is an outhouse. It’s not operational anymore, but it’s maintained for historical purposes.

“It’s a two-seater,” says Brother Williams, a deacon. “When I was a boy, I did my business out there a lot.”

How nice.

The fiddle, guitar, and mandolin are playing the song “Precious Memories.” And I can’t think of a better tune for tonight because the memories are getting thick.

These are Baptists, but not the hardshell kind. These are the sort who go to college football games toting soft coolers.

Even so, no matter what

kind they are, you can’t get Baptists together without having food. It’s in our DNA. Scripture says, “Wherever two or three are gathered, a chicken must be brutally murdered.”

There is some serious fried chicken here tonight. The real kind. Homemade. Church ladies place this food on a table that’s covered in gingham. The tablecloth is clipped with clothespins to keep it from blowing away.

In the pasture behind the church, children are playing a game of Tag.

I see an old man with a dog. He’s wearing an Auburn University cap—the man, not the dog. The dog follows the man everywhere he goes, begging for food from strangers.

I meet a woman who moved to the area from the big city.

“I used to have a good job in Birmingham,” she says. “I was in marketing, worked with some pretty big…